This invention relates generally to ironing board cabinets and more particularly relates to wall mounted cabinets for concealing ironing boards in a vertical “storage” orientation and supporting them in a horizontal “use” orientation.
Earlier ironing boards had leg supports that could be folded. If sufficient space were available, a board might, for convenience sake, be left free-standing in an ironing area. More commonly, for space and/or aesthetic reasons, the legs would be folded after each use and the board leaned against a wall or stored in a closet. For older folks or for folks with physical debilitations, folding and carrying the boards can be problematic.
For some time now, ironing boards have been marketed which are self-contained in wall mounted cabinets with hinged doors. The doors conceal their presence when stored and the cabinets support them while they are in use. Wall mounted cabinets, which may be either surface mounted on or recessed in the wall with the cabinet door and surrounding finish trim overlapping the wall exterior surface, have become particularly popular in applications such as small apartments with limited living and storage space.
Whether they are surface mounted or recessed, wall mounted ironing board cabinets are typically at least as deep as a standard wall stud in order to accommodate the hardware and other structural components necessary to the folding out and support of the ironing board. The door, of course, extends forward of the cabinet in either case.
Use of these presently known ironing board cabinets is limited for a variety of reasons. For one, it is sometimes difficult in limited space conditions, especially if windows, entry doors, wall contours and wall decorations intrude on much of the existing wall space, to find a location suited to both swinging the cabinet door to the side and swinging the ironing board down to its “use” condition. For another, despite efforts to design cabinets as shallow as possible, the depth necessitated by the designs of known operating components of the cabinets still appears, in some applications, to be obtrusive and aesthetically unpleasant. Furthermore, because the doors of known ironing board cabinets swing, they may not make sufficient use of the valuable space they do occupy.